Xander's road trip takes a turn for the worse as he makes his way back to Sunnydale and he finds himself caught up in a new war, one that may well be even more dangerous than the one he's already involved in. Sequel to Knights of the Hellmouth and an XCO

A/N: And welcome to the sequel to KOTH. I'm really interested in hearing some feedback on this one. I don't think I've ever seen a BTVS/X-Com crossover before, but if I'm wrong feel free to correct me! Anyway, the slightly better formatted version is on my homepage as usual so see the profile for that if you want it.

Chapter One

August 1999

Xander heard the
gunfire and saw the flashes of light indicating some sort of
firefight lighting up the night long before his car had reached the
town's limits. For most people, that would be a cue to turn right
around and head on back to where they coming from. Xander just kept
on going. As he got closer, he saw something that made him put the
pedal to the metal and drop his lightsabre down from the sheathe into
his off-hand: energy weapons fire. Not blasters, or at least not a
blaster he'd ever seen before, but definitely energy weapons. And
there was no other force on Earth with the knowledge to
construct such weapons now that Malak was dead.

If the weapons hadn't
came from Xander . . . well, he didn't really want to think about it.
Either Malak had shown an abnormal level of foresight and left behind
some sort of army with the holocrons, or . . . aliens? It didn't seem
possible, really, but there he was accelerating towards Oxnard and
seeing energy weapons blazing away and lighting up the night with
purple fire. And there were those strange somethings brushing at the
edge of his senses that were neither demon nor human as far as he
could tell.

God, he wished he
hadn't dropped Faith off in LA now. Going into a battlezone on his
own with no backup at all possible just wasn't his idea of fun at
all. He didn't even have many 'toys' with him, just the new
lightsabre he'd constructed using an emerald lifted from a demon lair
he'd dealt with alongside Faith back in St. Louis a month back and
the one he'd stolen from Malak locked in the boot. He'd used the last
of his grenades against the vampire nest they'd took out in LA last
week and just hadn't had the time to gather the components and put
together the weapons.

And to to top things
off, the energy weapon users seemed to be winning. The gunfire was
trailing off and the sounds of terrified, agonised screaming - both
male and female - could be made out as he passed the half-destroyed
'Welcome to Oxnard' sign. The waves of terror and pain emanating from
the people of the town that were hammering against his mental shields
left him in no doubt as to what was going on: Invasion.

He took a deep breath
and centred himself within the Force before he stepped out of the car
and brought his sabre up into a defensive position, ready to be
activated at a moment's notice. The area around where he'd parked the
car looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. What
wasn't riddled with bullet-holes was scorched and singed to the point
of collapsing, and the only light available as from the flames of the
burned-out cars and buildings that lined the streets. That wasn't the
worst of it though. Not even close. What was the worst was the bodies
. . . the utterly destroyed, disembowelled, mutilated bodies with
those terrorised, agonised looks forever locked on their faces.

Xander had to force
down a wave of anger that threatened to sweep through him as he
looked upon a girl, couldn't have been more than ten or eleven, and
the look on her face, the sheer horror, and then the completely
missing lower half of her body. There was just nothing there, blood
and gore hanging out from where the waist had been, but no sign of
the lower half of her body. He felt the dark abyss opening up within
him as he stared at the ruined body, and it tempted him. It sorely
tempted him. There was power in that abyss, he knew, power enough to
send these . . . things . . . scrabbling for safety.

Swallowing his rage,
Xander wrapped himself in the comforting embrace of the Force and
allowed his emotions to slip away into nothingness. It was this
action that gave him the split-second warning to move before a
monstrous creature lunged out of the darkness, slashing with its
claws at the space Xander had occupied before he'd leapt away onto
the hood of a nearby car.

Xander swallowed slowly
as he eyed the creature that had attacked him. Damned if it didn't
look like one of the aliens from the Alien series. It hissed and
snapped its mandibles at him before leaping at him, its jaws open,
but Xander was prepared this time, and in one smooth movement he
ignited his lightsabre, stepped aside, and cut the foul creature in
two as it overshot him. He stared at it for a long moment as its
green blood leaked out onto the tarmac, which promptly began to
lightly sizzle as the blood made contact. There was no demon in it as
far as he could tell but it sure as hell acted like one.

He felt . . . something
approaching him and looked up from the body. A tall, blonde-haired
man was shuffling towards him with a vacant look in his eyes. Shock,
perhaps?

"Hey," called
out Xander. "You okay?"

A short, plump woman
stepped out of the shadows and joined the man in shuffling towards
Xander. Xander opened his mouth to say something but clamped it shut
again when a woman in little more than her underwear also joined the
first in shuffling towards Xander.

"Okay, something's
not right here," he muttered as more and more of the people
stepped out of the shadows till there was an even dozen of them, all
shuffling towards Xander with vacant looks in their eyes. As they got
closer, the hairs on the back of his neck began to stand up. And the
feeling of death was unmistakeable. "Zombies! Frigging
wonderful," he muttered, before unleashing an overpowered wave
of telekinetic energy that scattered the zombies and bounced them off
the buildings and cars nearby. The zombies uniformly collapsed to the
ground and stopped moving

Xander barely had time
to wonder if they really were zombies what with going down that
easily when they began to . . . change. Their flesh rippled and their
bodies contorted horribly as they thrashed around on the floor, vague
sounds of pain coming from their locked-up throats. This was all too
familiar to Xander after the episode with the swim team, and he
stepped back away from the zombies and ignited his sabre, bringing it
up and around into a defensive position. All too soon the zombies
stopped writhing and their skin split, revealing an even dozen copies
of that alien he'd killed earlier. And they were all glaring at
Xander and clicking their claws ominously.

"Oh,"
said Xander. "Oh fuck."

He, just for a moment,
considered standing and fighting, but really . . . there were fights
even he didn't want to pick. Those things were fast. With a
quick application of Force power, he leapt up onto the roof of a
nearby convenience store - which creaked ominously as he landed - and
then began to bounce away across the roof-tops, putting a good bit of
distance between himself and the ravenous monsters with a grudge. He
wasn't sure if they had strong enough leg muscles to follow him but
he wasn't taking any chances. Ending up with a chest-buster inside
himself was not on his top-ten things to do.

When he was certain
that he'd left the creatures well behind he stopped his journey -
landing on the roof of a small semi-detached house - and took a
moment to take stock of the situation. As far as the eye could see
there was destruction, fires and corpses laying in the street and
burned out buildings. What this was meant to accomplish was utterly
beyond him. It was random destruction without rhyme or reason, the
sort of thing that Malak had indulged himself in after he fell to the
Dark Side. Nothing was being accomplished here. There was no military
value to Oxnard, nothing to be gained, it was just a slaughter of
people who could not defend themselves. Whatever defence was being
mounted was obviously being entirely overwhelmed.

"I wish HK was
here," muttered Xander. "I need a good killing machine on
my side right about now."

With that said, Xander
stepped off the roof of the building and dropped back down to ground
level. As shitty a situation as this was, there were still some
people left alive to protect from the attackers, and that was what he
would do. It was his duty as a Jedi Knight and as a decent human
being. Still, he wished he had some more firepower to back him up.

Actually
finding the living to protect them proved to be something that was
easier said than done, even for one with Xander's abilities.
Supernatural senses are a wonderful thing but they are easily
confused, especially in an area as saturated with death and pain as
that place was. Places like that are just not Jedi-friendly, not in
the slightest. It felt like he was drowning in darkness, and for
someone who didn't have as much experience as he did - albeit
second-hand through Revan's memories - it would have been horribly
disorientating.

It was when he was
walking down another non-descript street that he felt the twinge at
the edge of his senses that indicated an incoming attack. In a flurry
of motion, he activated his lightsabre and brought it into position
to block the incoming energy blast. But it didn't work. The blast
struck the lightsabre as expected but instead of being deflected it
simply split into two smaller blasts along the line of impact and
Xander barely had time to twist his body in such a way as to avoid
having two large holes blasted in his chest. As it was, the smaller
of the two halves splashed along his abdomen before he could fully
dodge.

Xander hissed in agony
as he felt his skin sear and burn under the power of the attack but
he had no time to stop and think about it as he leapt away to the
side out of the way of a burst of purple energy that he didn't even
want to think about what it would have done to him if he hadn't
dodged. Then his attacker moved into the light, giving Xander a
better look at him, still firing as Xander dodged frantically. Damned
if the thing didn't look a giant snake with body-builder arms and an
armoured upper-body.

After a rather brief
spate of frantic dodging, the snake-man's gun clicked and the rain of
purple fire stopped. Xander took full advantage of the lull and
hurled his lightsabre in a spear-throw like move that burned a hole
straight through the alien's forehead. It stood there staring dumbly
at him in disbelief for a moment before crumpling to the ground quite
dead. Xander summoned his sabre back to his hand and then went to
examine the corpse and its armament.

The body was entirely
unremarkable as far as Xander was concerned. Just another in an
endless series of monsters that had tried to kill him over the years,
and it was somewhat less bizarre than the giant preying mantis that
had tried to seduce him a few years back or the entirely repugnant
species known as the Hutts. The weapons on the other hand were a
great deal more interesting. The grenades . . . well, using a grenade
when you have no idea how the settings work wouldn't be the best idea
ever. The gun was something else though. It looked like you could
shoot down a battleship with the thing if you had good enough aim,
the damn thing was huge! He had no idea how powerful it really was
but it sure did enough damage to be getting on with - his scorched
abdomen could testify to that.

A further search
yielded a couple of ammunition clips and then he was ready to go. A
gun's a gun. Clip goes in and you pull the trigger to fire. Hardly
rocket science. The fact that they seemed to fire raw plasma that
wasn't coherent enough for him to deflect with his sabre made the use
of ranged weapons somewhat compulsory too. The masters would probably
frown upon it, but then they'd always frowned upon a lot of the
things he did for some reason or another. Strange that.

Suitably armed, Xander
went back to hunting through the streets, looking for survivors to
protect. There wasn't a whole lot of indication of where they were so
in the end he headed towards the booming sound of a shotgun being
repeatedly fired. It seemed as good a direction as any really and at
least there would be something at the end of the journey.

What
Xander found was a tall, grey-haired man holding off one of the Alien
wannabes with a pump-action shotgun. It wasn't doing all that much
damage really but there was enough kinetic energy in a twelve gauge
slug to knock the thing on its arse and keep it away from the couple
of kids that were cowering behind the old man. It was quite an
impressive show of nerve really. Those things were damned nasty and
he was just blasting away at it with no fear at all. Old soldier,
maybe?

As the alien regained
its footing once more and moved to attack again - not a very bright
creature really - Xander stepped out from his cover and opened fire
with his recently acquired new toy. The first shot sheared its arm
off at what passed for an elbow joint, the second one of its legs at
the mid-thigh, and the third blew a gaping hole in its chest as it
tumbled to the ground screeching. And it was still moving, dragging
itself forwards with its one good arm towards the people it had been
attacking. The grey-haired man simply put his shotgun against the
things head and pulled the trigger, cool as you like. At that range,
it was pretty much screwed and the green blood made a nice spatter
across the tarmac.

"Might want to
step away from that," said Xander. "I think its blood is
corrosive."

"Oh bloody
typical," snarled the man as his boots started to smoke. He
hopped away immediately, looking quite ridiculous. A moment passed as
the man regained his calm before he spoke again. "Where did you
get that gun?"

"Took it off one
of the snake-men things," said Xander.

"They have weapons
like that?" asked the man. Xander nodded to the affirmative.
"This just keeps getting better. Any sign of reinforcements?"

"Not that I've
seen," said Xander.

"Wonderful,"
said the man with a sigh. "By the time they get troops here
we'll all be dead at this rate."

"Oh it gets
better," said Xander. "I left a dozen of those things
behind a few blocks back and it doesn't look like there's anyone else
around to slow them down."

The man blinked and
then swore. Loudly. "Kids, time to get moving," he said
after a moment's thought.

Xander didn't even have
to take a moment to think about it. "Here," he said,
holding the gun out to the man. "Take this. It'll give you and
those kids a fighting chance."

"And what about
you?" asked the man, as he took the gun and the spare clip
Xander was carrying.

"I have my ways,"
said Xander. "Now go. Get those kids to safety."

"I won't forget
this," said the man with a respectful nod. And then he was gone,
leading the kids away at a good clip.

Xander sighed deeply as
the group passed out of sight. Looked like he was going to have to
try and fight those things anyway. Wonderful. He drew his lightsabre
once more and took a deep breath to centre himself and began to draw
the Force to him, calling as much power to his use as he could. How
the hell he ended up in situations like this was utterly beyond him.
He could feel the monstrous beasts that he'd left behind scurrying
closer to him now, moving fast towards his position. It wasn't all of
them, thank all that's good and holy, but there was enough.

He ignited his
lightsabre and assumed an aggressive posture, awaiting the inevitable
battle for his life. He'd expected a lot of things from being a Jedi,
but fighting off some sort of alien invasion force . . . well, this
was different. It could be worse - they could be Sith - but it was
still pretty bad as far as he could tell. This planet just wasn't
read to fight such a war. The technology wasn't there and humans were
still busily killing each other over stupid squabbles. Religion,
territory, old grudges . . . and here there was an alien army in the
early processes of invading the Earth. Wonderful.

Xander could see them
now, barely. Black creatures in a town lit up only by the burning
hulks that were once cars aren't exactly easy to see. Still, sight
was unimportant. He could feel them and their intentions. They
wanted him, they wanted to make him into one of them. His lip curled
into a disdainful smile. It would be a cold day in hell before he
allowed himself to be turned into some mindless, ravening beat. If
they could understand such things, he would have taunted them with
that knowledge, but they lacked the intelligence to understand
insults.

And then they were on
him. Claws and teeth snapping, they came, closing to melee range and
attacking at blinding speeds. It was all Xander could do to dodge the
attacks coming from half a dozen different directions at once while
using his lightsabre to keep the other aliens at a distance. They
seemed to have learned that the green blade was death, disturbingly
enough, so they must have had some intelligence, even if it was
restricted to an animal level.

Xander had to reach
deep into his reserves of power as he enhanced his speed to levels
that would leave him little more than a blur of motion to an ordinary
human observer, and even that combined with the usual short-range
pre-cognition used by all Jedi in battle was barely keeping him ahead
of the monsters attacking him. In the end something had to give and
Xander knew it, so he gathered the Force in his legs and leapt away
to give himself some room to breathe.

The aliens lunged after
him immediately but Xander was quick enough to counter them, grabbing
hold of a burned-out car with the Force and hurling it into their
midst. Most were quick enough to dodge the vehicle turned missile but
two of the aliens reacted just a moment too slowly and were crushed
under several tons of twisted metal that had once been a 50s era
American-built car. And then the rest were on him and he was back to
dodging frantically and using his sabre to hold them off.

One alien lunged
forward, claws extended and snapping at Xander, and he immediately
reacted by cutting its claws off at what passed for the beast's
forearms, but in that he left himself open for just a moment. And in
that moment, one of the beasts took advantage. Xander's world turned
to pain as he felt a clawed arm pierce his already wounded abdomen
and dark spots danced in front of his eyes as he fought to stay
conscious. He couldn't help but let out a small cry of pain.

Xander looked up and
saw one of the beasts lunging at him jaws first and in a moment of
panic, he clenched his fist and unleashed a brutal dose of
telekinetic energy that pulped the creature's head and dropped it to
the ground twitching as its nervous system. Immediately Xander
brought his lightsabre around and bisected the alien that had gored
him on its claws and managed to unsteadily leap away to try and buy
some time to recover from his injury.

There were only three
of the aliens left now, not such a bad number for one of Xander's
power to face, but in his weakened state it was going to be difficult
he knew. He could feel some sort of poison beginning to work through
his system and the basic nature of his wounds meant they were going
to slow him down immeasurably on their own. The aliens attacked and
Xander was back-pedalling immediately, trying to keep some distance
between himself and those bloody claws.

As Xander clumsily
rolled out of the way of one slightly over-extended attack, he heard
it: The sound of planes and helicopters approaching. Reinforcements
were here. With renewed confidence, he brandished his sabre and
motioned for the aliens to come get some. They might not have
understood the gesture but they attacked anyway. The first alien was
neatly decapitated in an effortless manoeuvre but the second got in
far too close before Xander bisected it in a last-ditch attack that
left his defences wide open. The third alien plunged its claws deep
into Xander's left shoulder and he cried out in pain before bringing
his lightsabre around and decapitating it just before it could sink
its teeth into his neck.

Xander blinked and
staggered back as he felt the poison redouble its workings through
his body. He tried to focus his powers on purging the toxins from his
rapidly weakening body but his control slipped almost immediately. He
tried to regain his grip on his powers but it was like trying to hold
onto water. He fell to his knees and his breath came in sharp gasps
as his strength waned. He would not die like this! No!

"He's coming
around!"

"Jesus Christ, are we even sure this guy
isn't one of them? Sedate him!"

"Pulse
is going crazy here."

"We need some more
of the anti-venom from stores. How the fuck is this guy still
breathing?"

"He's coming
around again."

"Fuck's sake.
Sedate him then!"

Xander
blinked as he woke up. As sluggish as he felt, the poison seemed to
be gone and his breath was coming as easily as it normally did. He'd
survived. He tried to sit up and found he couldn't. Okay, he was
strapped to the bed . . . that wasn't good.

"Eight
Chryssalids, kid," said a voice to his left. Xander turned to
face it and saw a tall, older man in military-style fatigues. He
didn't recognise the rank markings. "I'm impressed. Most
soldiers can't even take one. Then again, they're stuck with normal
weapons."

Xander just stared at
the man.

"They're going
crazy over that fancy doohickey of yours in the labs you know,"
said the old man. "Well, they're going crazy over the one we
found locked in your trunk. I figured it would be best if I didn't
let the lab-monkeys trash your weapon."

Xander nodded slowly.
"For that, I'm grateful."

"Oh you have a lot
more than that to be grateful for," said the man. "You
wouldn't have had a snowball in hell's chance of surviving if we
hadn't found and treated you."

"True," said
Xander. "But that's just part of being a decent human being. You
don't leave people to die in the streets."

"I'm not paid to
be a decent human being, boy," said the man. "I'm paid to
kill aliens and win battles."

"Charming."

"Yeah," said
the main. "Charming's my middle name. Now I've just got to
decide what we're going to do with you."

"And what makes
you think I'll go along with whatever you decide?" asked Xander.
"I won't be caged easily."

"Maybe not,"
said the man. "But I can make life very, very difficult for you.
What with carrying around so much lethal weaponry, driving around in
a car registered to a Rachel Giles, carrying around Rachel Giles's
ID, and us not being able to find Rachel Giles . . . well, we have
enough to put you away for a very long time, I think. That's not even
going into some of the very interesting information I found
when I looked into Sunnydale."

"If you go after
my friends, I will kill you," said Xander in a matter-of-fact
tone of voice.

"Maybe," said
the man. "But that's not what I was talking about. I was more
interested in those explosives you like playing around with and the
mysterious disappearance of one of the mayor's employees. Curious
stuff."

"You've done your
research," said Xander, and then he reached out with his mind
and released the restraints that had been placed upon him. "But
I'm not sure you quite understand what you're threatening."

"Was that supposed
to impress me, kid?" asked the man. "I've seen the aliens
pull far more impressive stunts than that, and you'd never make it
out of the base if you tried anything no matter how powerful you
are."

Xander found himself
stymied. He didn't particularly want to start a battle here, but he
didn't much appreciate being threatened either. This man didn't feel
evil. Ruthless and aggressive, yes, but he was fighting on the right
side. In the end Xander settled for shooting the man a malevolent
glare that had in the past reducing grown men to quivering wrecks.
Unsurprisingly, it had little effect.

"Now that we've
both done our posturing, maybe we can get down to business,"
said the man. "I'm the Commander In Charge of American
Operations, so I have quite a bit of leeway, and I want you on my
staff."

"American
Operations of what organisation?" asked Xander. "And what
exactly do you want me doing?"

"X-COM,
of course. The Extraterrestrial Combat Unit," said the man. "I'm
Commander Miller. And I want you on the ground as a soldier fighting
those bastards. The science and engineering lots want you too but
there's no way I'm wasting someone who can take out Chryssalids in
melee combat there."

"And who gives you
your authority?" asked Xander.

"The UN, I
suppose," said Commander Miller. "It's all done on the
quiet so I don't really know much beyond the fact that there's a
large coalition of nations behind X-COM funding. The Supreme
Commander would know more but he's not around here often."

"I
can't in good conscience walk away from this," said Xander. "But
I'll need time to settle my affairs. I can't just walk away from my
life and be done with it."

"That's
acceptable," said the commander. "We give all of our
recruits a couple of weeks for that before we put them through
training."

Xander nodded in
acceptance of that. "There are some more things about that you
probably need to know," he said, before promptly triggering the
transformation and morphing into his female form, into Rachel.

"Huh," said
the commander, before falling silent for a moment. "Well, that's
definitely new. How much flexibility do you have in that?"

"Male or female,"
said Rachel before morphing back into Xander. "No control over
what the form actually looks like."

"Shame", said
the commander. "A shape shifter could have been useful. Anyway,
you'd best keep that to yourself. Don't ask, don't tell and all
that."

Xander scowled
slightly. "I'm not gay."

"Whatever,"
said the commander. "I don't really care where you dip your
wick. X-COM doesn't really care either, to be honest, but the
squaddies . . . well, they're the same as any squaddies you'll find.
Most wouldn't really care, but the ones that do . . . Best to keep
such things to yourself. And they're just going to assume with that
trick."

"Then the bigots
should be bloody well dealt with," said Xander.

"Ha! We need all
the warm bodies we can get," said the commander. "You've
seen what it's like out there. You think we can afford to turn away
competent soldiers? As long as they don't cross the line, I have use
for them."

Xander could see the
logic in that. "Fine," he said. "I'll just stay male.
I can deal with that."

The commander nodded.
"Good," he said, before reaching into a pocket and pulling
out Xander's lightsabre and tossing it to him. You go settle your
affairs. We'll be in touch soon enough. Just make sure things really
are settled because you won't be getting much leave till the war's
over."

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